


Time Apart

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, F/M, Marriage, Romance, Wendip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26269900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: February 2018: Wendy gets a rare opportunity for an undergraduate: a chance to attend an academic conference in her field. It's too good to pass up, but Dipper can't go with her, and for the first time the young married couple has to spend some time apart.
Relationships: Wendy Corduroy/Dipper Pines
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the show Gravity Falls or any of the characters. They are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of the show's creator, Alex Hirsch. I earn no money from writing my fanfictions; I do them out of love for the show, for practice writing, and to amuse myself and, I hope, other readers.

* * *

**Time Apart**

**by William Easley**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**1**

One problem with attending Western Alliance University was that the nearest reasonably large airport was over a hundred miles distant—Rogue Valley International, in Medford. Wendy told Dipper about the trip around the first of the month: "Dr. Deavers wants me to attend the Forestry Management Conference at the end of February. He says it's not too early for me to begin making some professional contacts. I'm trying to decide if it's a good idea."

"Sure, it's a good idea," Mabel said. "If that's going to be what you do, go for it! Yay, trees!"

They were sitting at the breakfast table of the house that Stan had found for Dipper and Mabel, a few miles from both Western Alliance University (where Wendy and Dipper were enrolled) and from Olmsted College of the Arts (Mabel's school). It was a windy Saturday, not very cold—temperature in the mid-fifties—but Tripper, the dog, was content to laze on the floor and now and then field a small fragment of turkey bacon that Mabel tossed to him.

"Dip?" Wendy asked.

"Uh, sounds great," Dipper said. "But where is the conference?"

"The University of Colorado in Fort Collins. There are five grad students and Dr. Deavers going. They'll fly into Denver and the University's sending vans to ferry conference attendees to the University."

"How far is that from Denver?" Dipper asked.

"It's sixty-some miles, I think," Wendy said. "The conference will run from the twenty-third to the twenty-fifth—that's Friday to Sunday noon. There's financial help from the department, so I won't have to pay the conference fee. We're being housed in a visitor's dorm—don't worry, Agnes Berger's going, too—she's a grad student—and she and I will share a room. The others are guys."

Dipper laughed. "I don't have to worry about anything like that. But I can't go with you, because we have a track meet that Saturday. Are you guys planning to fly together?"

"I'll have to ask," Wendy said.

* * *

On Monday after her class, Wendy told Dipper, "OK, here's the deal: on that Friday, the twenty-third, everybody going to the conference gets excused absences. We have to be on campus by seven that morning, and we're going to be driven to Medford in one of the small college buses. We're flying out from there around eleven in the morning. Sunday we'll be back about seven in the evening. Do-able?"

"Sure," Dipper said.

"OK, we got a special group deal for the airfare, and we'll need money for food and such."

"Fine," Dipper said. "Put the ticket and meals on the credit card, but I'd also take some cash, fifty dollars or so."

"You look sort of sad," she said.

"We haven't been apart in a long time," he said. "Gonna miss you."

"I'll text you every day."

"Be like old times," Dipper said.

"Hey, it'll be sort of sad when I go away, but think of how sweet it'll be when you welcome me home again!"

Even though they were sitting in the library, they kissed—and exchanged thoughts and feelings.

When they broke apart, Wendy said, "I'm glad you trust me, Dip."

"Don't worry about going on the trip," Dipper told her. "It'll be great for you. And you'll get to know a whole bunch of people in your field of study. What goes on at the conference?"

"There's gonna be workshops and pros and scholars in the field will present papers on different topics. I have a schedule, and I'm real interested in a session on ecological challenges in forests of the Pacific Northwest. And there's one on invasive species that goes right along with one of my courses this term."

"Sounds good."

"I'm nervous," confessed Wendy. "Not many underclassmen will be there. Everybody else will be grad students or professors. Wish you could be there with me."

"Maybe I can get Coach to—"

She kissed him again. "No, no, no! That's sweet of you, but I can't ask you to do that. You go to the track meet and win for me!"

"I'll do my best, Lumberjack Girl!"

* * *

The week before the trip found Dipper fretting more and more. On Wednesday morning, he checked the weather in Denver and told Wendy, "It's gonna be crazy cold, Wen—I mean, like in the single digits."

"I've got my Gravity Falls winter stuff," she said. "I'll wear that."

"Be sure to wear your ushanka," he said. "You might even want to let the earflaps down."

"With this hair?" Wendy asked, chuckling. "But, yeah, I'll wear it."

Mabel, who had just come into the dining room for breakfast, overheard and said, "I got a sweater for you! I've been working on it for weeks! Wait, I'll get it!" She ducked out, and galloped back in a few seconds. The sweater was forest-green—one of Wendy's favorite colors—and Mabel had appliquéd the logo of the university, a white circle with a dark-blue WAU in the center. "Try it on!" Mabel urged.

"Wow, thanks, Mabes!" Wendy said. She pulled the sweater on and posed, turning three-quarters toward Dipper and standing with a hand on her hip. "How does it look?"

"Tight," Dipper said.

"No, it's comfortable," Wendy said. "And it's nice and warm, too."

"I can whip up a baggier one," Mabel offered. "It'll be a stretch to get it done by Friday morning, but—"

"This is fine," Wendy insisted. "Dipper's just jealous!"

"No, I'm not," Dipper said. "It's just that—well, you said the other students are almost all guys—"

"Hey, Brobro," Mabel scolded, though in a playful way, "Wendy can take care of herself. If anybody hits on her, she can shut him down!"

"In a skinny minute," Wendy said. "But I've had labs with these guys. They're OK. And if anybody at the meeting flirts, I'll flash my rings."

"Now I feel like a jerk," Dipper said.

"If the shoe fits, tie it!" Mabel said.

* * *

Best-laid plans and that. On Friday morning, Wendy's car, the Green Machine, let her down—or two tires did. Less than a quarter mile from their house, on the country road, around a curve, a two-by-four with a few rusty nails sticking out lay in her way, and she couldn't avoid hitting it.

One flat would have been no problem. Two—put the Dodge Dart out of commission. Wendy made a couple of hasty calls, and Dr. Deavers said the longest they could wait before leaving would be seven-fifteen—which meant they couldn't detour to pick her up. Dipper said, "You've already bought your ticket. You can't miss this. I'll get you there."

Mabel agreed to wait for a tow truck to bring the Dart back to the house, where Wendy could later mount a couple of tires.

In the end, Dipper called two of his professors, told them the problem, and got permission to miss classes. "Too late to drive you in to catch the bus," he said. "I'll drive you to the airport, and we'll meet up with the others there."

Not ideal—it would be about a four-hour round trip for Dipper—but that seemed like the best they could do. "Watch out for lumber in the road," Wendy said in a grumpy voice. She hated when anything happened to the Green Machine.

They had been on the road for an hour when Mabel called Wendy and told her the tow truck had left the Dart in the driveway. "Anything I should do?" she asked.

"No, you get into class while you can," Wendy said.

"It's cool, I've got time. Do you want me to buy two tires—"

"No, no, I'll take care of getting the tires," Wendy said. "Dip and I can manage with just his car until I can do that."

"Have a good trip, then," Mabel said. "Hey, did you pack the sweater?"

"It's in my carry-on," Wendy said. "So I can put it on when we get to Colorado."

Rogue Valley wasn't a huge airport, and Dipper parked and walked Wendy to the building. She had packed efficiently and had only a small roll-on suitcase and the Piedmont duffel that Dipper had had since almost forever.

"There's the school bus!" Wendy said. It pulled away from the curb as Dipper and Wendy got to the sidewalk.

"Is that the group over there?" Dipper asked. A cluster of guys and one girl were just entering the main door of the airport, shepherded by the tall Dr. Deavers and his wife Ann.

"That's them!" Dipper trotted along with Wendy, the group, approaching the security gate, saw them and waved and waited, and she turned and kissed Dipper. "Thanks for getting me here. Love you, man."

He hugged her, not caring that the others were looking on with great big smiles, and kissed her. "Love you, too. Call me soon as you get there!"

"Will do."

He watched her and the group go through Security before giving Wendy a final smile and a wave. Then he turned and walked back to the parking lot and his Land Runner. He hunched a little deeper in his jacket. It was much cooler here, in the mid-thirties, with a slow, thin rain failing.

For a time, Dipper sat behind the steering wheel. Then he saw the airliner take off and fade into the low clouds. "Be safe," he whispered. "Keep my girl safe." He couldn't have said whether it was a wish or a prayer.

He sighed and started the engine. The drive back to Crescent City took two hours. And, as far as Dipper was concerned, forever.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Time Apart**

(February 2018)

* * *

**2**

Dipper returned home that Friday afternoon reminding himself that he'd have to buy gas the next morning when he drove to meet the track team for the event. What stations would be open at 5:00 AM? Well, he had enough to get to campus and back, so it wasn't that big a problem.

Mabel's RAV4, Black Beauty, wasn't in the garage. Tripper was ecstatic to see he'd come home again—the dog's body language said, "I missed you so much!" He let him out into the back yard, drank a glass of water, and waited by the deck door until the dog climbed back up the stairs to report all in order. Dipper ruffled his ears. "Want to help?"

They went through the mud room into the oversized garage. The rear served as a mostly-automotive workshop, and in two trips Dipper brought Wendy's heavy-duty jack and two jack stands out onto the driveway.

Car mechanics was more of Wendy's specialty, but he'd picked up a lot from her by their touch-telepathy. He started by loosening the lug nuts on the flat tires, and then, carefully, with Tripper lying on the grass and critically supervising, he used the jack to raise the Dart off the flat tires and onto the stands. He tested to make sure they were level and properly positioned. Then he removed the lug nuts and wheels and rolled the flats back into the garage.

Tripper was sniffing around the Dart when Dipper came back. "That's all we can do right now, boy. Want to come in for a snack?"

Well, of course he did. Dipper gave him a small dog biscuit, then unlatched the doggy door and showed Tripper it could swing freely. The dog went out to enjoy his biscuit in the sunshine on the deck.

Dipper went to wash his hands.

And wouldn't you know it, just as soon as he had his greasy hands covered with suds, his phone rang—Wendy's ring tone.

"Don't hang up, don't hang up," he chanted, rinsing and drying like a madman. He snatched the phone up and said, "Hi!"

* * *

Wendy, stretched out on the dorm bed, said, "Promised I'd call, remember? I would've phoned as soon as we landed in Denver, but I think we must've got there before you could have driven back to Crescent City. Oh, remember this now, I gave you the wrong college! This isn't the University of Colorado, it's Colorado State University. I wasn't clear on that myself. Anyway, here I am in the guest dorm."

"How was the flight?" Dipper asked.

"Kinda creepy taking off—we flew up into the clouds and everything went real dim for about a quarter hour, but then we were up in the sunshine. Smooth flight from there on in. You were right—it's frigid way up here! Where I am, off to the east it's like a prairie. Flat as a table, but off to the west I can see the Rockies. The campus is in a sort of valley, it's bigger than Western Alliance and the buildings are really nice, too. Agnes and I unpacked, and she's gone downstairs to get our registration packets. You ought to see the dorm room!"

"Nice, I hope?" Dipper said.

"Yeah, new furniture, very clean. Way small, though, and cramped. Two beds, bunk beds, but—would you believe it? Both are uppers! A desk is against the wall under each bed. Saves floor space, I guess. We've got our own bathroom and shower, but the weird thing is when we come in from the hall, we have to walk past the bathroom door, and the sink is on the outside, so the walk-in hall is kinda part of the bathroom. Oh, and the bed's too short! I'm layin' down on mine now, and my big feet are hanging off the end. I'll have to sleep on my side with my knees bent, I suppose."

Dipper chuckled. "Just pretend we're spooning."

"Good idea. Was the drive back bad?"

"No, but the first hour was through this drifting, misty rain. Once or twice I saw a little ice in the trees, but the road was clear. I took the wheels off the Green Machine. I'll get the flats off the rims for you, too."

"Dip, you don't have to do that!"

"I don't mind," he said. "Maybe a guy should learn how to replace a tire!"

"Yeah, well, you wait until I get back. I know just what tires I want to order. Gonna be expensive."

"Don't worry about it. Our savings account's healthy."

"Hey, call me tomorrow after your track meet, OK? Let me know how you do."

"Sure," he said. "Only remember you're an hour later ahead of us. We'll finish the meet at five. OK if I call you just after six, California time?"

"I'll check, but I think—oh, hey, wait." She slipped off the mattress and let herself drop down to the floor. "Coming!"

She opened the door and Agnes Berger, a second-year grad student going for her master's degree, came in. "Thanks! It's a bitch finding that key card." Her hands were full of brochures and maps and things, with two plastic bags full of more junk. "Let's see . . . this one's yours. Your badge is in there and all that. Oops, you on the phone?"

"Yeah, my hubby called. Is there a schedule in this bag?"

Agnes handed her a trifold brochure. "Use mine. I'm gonna go through my goodie bag. You go ahead with your call."

With a grunt, Wendy climbed up on her bed. "Sorry, man, my roomie just came back. The dorm room door locks when you close it, so I opened it for her. Just a sec, just a sec, checking the schedule . . . Saturday, here we go. I don't have anything from five until seven-thirty except 'Dinner in the dining hall, on your own.' So yeah, call an hour after the meet's over."

"OK. You sound busy."

"Um . . . got about a half hour to freshen up and get to that presentation on invasive species. It's . . . let's see, here's the map . . . a little walk from here, not all that far. I hate to hang up. I've been missing you."

"I'm missing you, too," he said. "Can you say, 'I love you?'"

Wendy glanced down. Agnes, about 23, was an outdoorsy girl, cheerful, not exactly fat but muscular and hefty. Wendy didn't really know her all that well. "Yeah, I'll tell you all about that later," she said. "In detail."

"Oh, your roommate . . . I get it. Well, I love you. Nobody's here but me and Tripper, and he doesn't mind."

Wendy bit her lower lip, smiling. "Hey, Dip?" she purred. "You know what I'd really like to hear right now, 'cause I'm missing you?"

"Aggh. No!" Dipper said. "Please don't make me."

Wendy gave a dramatic sigh. "Well, it's just that I'm missing you so crazy much—"

On the phone, Dipper began to sing softly, "Well, who wants a lamby, lamby . . .."

Wendy giggled. When the song was finishing up, as Dipper sang, "don't, don't, don't, forget about the ba-aby!" she softly crooned "I do. I do. And I'll never forget about you, either, Dip. I promise. Better change clothes and get ready for the presentation. Be sure to call tomorrow."

"I will. I love you."

The heck with a possibly nosy roomie. "I love you too," Wendy said.

As soon as she thumbed her phone off, Wendy hopped off the bed again. "Think this sweater will do for a paper reading, Agnes?"

Agnes glanced up. "Oh, sure. It would be cooler if the decal was for Colorado State, but that's fine."

"It's better as Western Alliance. If I'd asked my sister-in-law to make it for here, it'd be wrong, because I was thinking the conference was at the University of Colorado. Anyway, now people will know I'm from Western Alliance, and she did a great job on the knitting —"

"She _knitted_ it?" Agnes stood up and touched the sleeve of the sweater. "This is home-made?"

"Mabel's an artist," Wendy said. "She's got all these crazy cool talents."

"Mabel? Uh, your husband's sister, or—"

"Yeah, that's right."

"How old is she?"

"Eighteen," Wendy said. "She and Dipper are twins."

"Whoa, wait. Aren't you like a grad student?"

"Nope. Second-term sophomore. I'm a little bit older than Dipper."

Agnes sat down in her desk chair, laughing. "I—I'm sorry. Dipper? Mabel? Are they from somewhere really far back in the sticks? I mean, those names!"

"They're from the Oakland area," Wendy said. She pushed off her jeans and donned a pair of black tailored slacks, then a white pullover long-sleeved shirt. The put on the sweater over that. "I guess it's a little bit odd, but Dip and I are cut out for each other. I mean, like the first minute he saw me, he was just twelve, and I was a year or two older. You know how it is then, it's like there's a super difference in one or two years, and I figured it was just a crush—"

"Um, my boyfriends are all girls," Agnes said delicately. "I don't think any boy ever had a crush on me."

"Oh, didn't know," Wendy said. "Anyway, the more time that passed, the more I started to see that he was a really great guy. He's an amateur musician, he's like super-smart, and he works hard when he's shooting for a goal. Like he decided to go out for the track team in high school, and lots of people laughed at that, but he wound up winning the state championship for the hundred-meter dash."

"Was he the guy that saw you off at the airport?"

"Yes. That's something else—when I was driving in to catch the bus to the airport—"

"You had an accident, yeah. Doc Deavers told us. You OK?"

"I just hit some junk that had fallen off a pickup or something," Wendy said. "Blew my two right tires. And Dipper called his professors and told them what was up, and they let him cut class to drive me to Rogue Valley. I owe him."

"Sounds like a good guy," Agnes said. "You look great in that outfit, by the way."

"Thanks! What are you going to?"

"I'm going down to register at the job fair table," Agnes said. "I should have my Masters in a year, and I want to see what the market's like."

"OK. I'm gonna be out of the presentation at six, and then there's the banquet in the big dining room. If you get there first, save me a place at the table, and I'll do the same for you if I get there first."

"Cool. See you then!" Agnes didn't change, but pinned her name badge on and started for the door. Wendy was doing a little touch-up on the light makeup she typically wore to class. Agnes hesitated in the doorway. "What was that bit where you asked him for something? I couldn't help hearing."

Wendy chuckled. "We've kind of got a special song. I just asked him to sing it to me."

"Nice," Agnes said. "Maybe someday I'll find someone like that. See you at dinner."

* * *

The presentation on invasive species took ninety minutes—for about an hour, Dr. Sergio Knox read his paper and accompanied it with a slide show. Before taking questions he impishly included a fifteen-minute quiz, flashing images of vegetation on the screen and asking, "Native or invasive?"

The first image was chicory. "Well?" Knox asked.

"What is it?" asked someone from the far side of the room.

"No, that's telling," Knox said. "Anybody?"

"It's chicory, and if that photo's from Colorado, it's invasive," said Wendy.

"Quite right! Who said that? Stand up."

Wendy stood, embarrassed. The lights were low, but not out, and she felt acutely aware that everyone was looking at her.

"Your name and institution, young lady?" asked Knox.

"Wendy Corduroy-Pines, Western Alliance University," she said.

"Ah, then, let me see—what's this, and is it native or invasive?"

Tricky, because the photo showed only foliage, no blossoms. However, Wendy smiled. "Nutka Rose," she said. "And it's native, at least where I come from—Oregon."

"Thank you, Miss Corduroy-Pines."

"Mrs," she said, putting special emphasis on the word. She sat down, deciding to let someone else have a turn with the next photo. Before Knox could show a new picture, someone touched Wendy's shoulder.

She glanced around and then, in absolute surprise, she asked. " _You?_ What are _you_ doing here?"

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**3**

After his call to Wendy, Dipper made another one, this time to Gravity Falls—not to Stan or Ford, not to Soos or even Pacifica, but to Steve, who owned a garage where Wendy had often worked on her Dart. "Hi," Dipper said after reminding Steve that he was now Wendy's husband, "do you know what tires Wendy runs on her Dart? She needs a new set."

"Oh, sure," Steve said. "You're gonna want radials, size 205/ R70OR14."

"Let me write that down," Dipper said. Steve patiently repeated, putting in the slash mark.

Then the mechanic said, "I can get you a deal on the ones I know she'd want—the RoadRich Crown. They're top-rated but expensive. List is, let me see . . . working on the computer . . . list is $275 each, but I can get you some for . . . discount, discount . . . for $240 apiece."

"Yeah, I don't know if we can buy them from you, though," Dipper said. "Thing is, she blew two tires at the same time. They're tearing down an old building further up the road, an abandoned house, and some debris from it wound up in the road and ripped up both the right tires."

"Road hazard, rough," Steve said. "Yeah, even if you put on the spare and got a cheap retread to make the drive up—you're down in California now, right?"

"Right. It's still about a three-hundred-mile drive."

"Yeah, and with the kind of snow we've been getting, I wouldn't risk it. Besides, the extra tire would wipe out the savings. She want just two?"

"It's really time for a whole new set," Dipper said.

"Let me see what I can do. Might be able to swing her a deal at a local retailer's. What town now?"

"Crescent City," Dipper said. "We've got my car, and I could pick them up for her. She'll do the work herself."

"Best thing," Steve said. "Then she'll know it's done right. Might not have time this afternoon, but I'll put it on my calendar for Monday, call you back."

"Thanks, man. I owe you one."

"Nah," Steve said. "She worked off any debt a long time ago. She's great with engine work, wish I could've hired her full-time!"

Dipper put in more than an hour of reading for his Monday classes, and then Mabel breezed in, setting Tripper off into a leaping, dancing ecstasy. She took time to kneel and ask how was the cute iddle puppy, den? Then she asked, "Did Wendy make her flight OK?"

"I got her there on time," Dipper told her, closing his textbook. "She called a couple of hours ago. She sounds like she's enjoying the conference. How was school?"

"Schooly," she said, dumping her backpack outside her bedroom door. "Oh, hey, I got an A on my sculpture project! I still think it's about five per cent lopsided, though."

"I don't think that matters," Dipper told her. Her project was an alabaster carving, based on a photo she had taken of Tripper in one of his doggy-dance poses. The photo had caught him standing on three legs, with a foreleg raised and his head tilted. The sculpture was supposed to be interpretive, not literally representative, and Mabel had produced a delicate system of smooth, curved shapes that certainly suggested a dog's joy.

And though it wasn't supposed to look like a deliberate imitation of the photo, Dipper could recognize Tripper in the carving—the inner Tripper, anyway, that oddly intelligent, happy dog.

But Mabel had her mind on less artistic matters. "What's for dinner?" she asked. "This is my night for a long face-time with Teek, remember! Can't be late for that."

"I haven't cooked anything," Dipper said. "Want to go out?"

"Nah, after getting up early, I just want to hang here," Mabel said. "Hey, didn't we freeze some of that lasagna?"

"Yeah, we can heat that up," Dipper said.

"Yum! And some garlic bread! We got olive oil? We got garlic?"

"Yes, and yes," Dipper said.

"Then get busy, Brobro! That lasagna won't heat itself!"

"Then you feed Tripper," Dipper said, getting up, stretching, and heading for the fridge.

* * *

Wendy followed Stanford Pines into the hall outside the classroom where the invasive-species presentation had trailed into question-and-answer. "What's up?" she asked him.

"I'm surprised to find you here!" Stanford said. "Is Mason with you?"

"No," Wendy said, and she explained that he had stayed home because of a track meet and that Dean Deavers himself had suggested she attend the conference. "But why are you here?"

Stanford asked, "Have you had dinner yet?"

"No, there's a banquet sort of thing planned for this evening."

"Do you have to attend?"

"I suppose not," Wendy said. "Why?"

"If you'll have dinner with me, I'll explain everything," Stanford said.

"Oh, well—let me text my roommate first," Wendy said. "Otherwise, she'll be holding a place for me." She sent the text.

Ford asked, "Will a vegetarian place do? There's one just off-campus called the Internationale Collective that I've been told is informal and good."

"Sure," she said. "Let me go back to the dorm to get my jacket and hat."

That took only a few minutes. Stanford remarked, "I'm staying on the first floor here myself. Room 112. I came here because I'd understood that Dr. Roy Baggett was coming, but unfortunately I've learned he canceled because he's down with bronchitis. I'm glad you're here—I'm on an investigation, and if you can spare the time, I need help."

The sun was setting, the temperature was dropping, and a few small flakes of dry snow swirled down against the windshield as Ford drove them to the restaurant. It seemed popular, and they had to wait about a quarter of an hour for a table. "We'll talk after we eat," Ford said. "I would have brought Lorena, but she's busy this weekend helping the Historical Society plan for this year's Pioneer Days. The phenomenon I'm interested in isn't specific enough to involve the Agency—well, more of that later. Let's choose our entrees."

Wendy ordered a tofu curry, Ford a sweet-and-sour tofu bowl. The food was not terribly fancy, but good and hot. Stanford wouldn't let her pay, but took the check and left a generous tip. "I never get that right," he said good-naturedly as they walked out to his Lincoln in the parking lot. Deep twilight had fallen, the streetlights were on, and the snow flurries seemed to have blown past. "Lorena says I always over tip, but when I cut back, she says I go too far in the other direction. Mind going for a drive?"

"I guess not. Where to?"

"It's a few miles west, in the foothills. It's a place that used to be a mining town before it vanished."

"What is it now?" Wendy asked. "A ghost town?"

"Not exactly," Ford said. "Now—it's nothing."

"I don't get it, Dr. P."

Ford didn't answer for a few seconds. Then he asked, "Tell me, have you ever heard of something called the Slide Rock Bolter?"

"Slide Rock what?"

"Bolter."

"No," Wendy said. "Sounds like some kind of weird tool. Something a miner might use."

"It isn't," Ford told her.

"What is it then?"

Again, Ford let a few second pass before, speaking with great deliberation, he said, "I'm afraid it's supposed to be a very dangerous monster."

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**4**

Before Wendy could ask Stanford Pines about the monster, her phone rang. "Dipper," she said, taking it out of her coat pocket. "Hi, Dip!"

"Is this a bad time?" Dipper asked.

"No, no, I've had dinner already, and there's nothing on the schedule."

"That's good. I love you, Wen. I'm missing you so bad right now! Wait, I hear background noise—are you driving somewhere?"

Grinning, Wendy said, "An older man's taking me for a long drive in the country."

"Oh, well, I—wait, what?"

"Yeah," Wendy said mischievously. "He's a real cool professor-type. Top expert in his field. And maybe I shouldn't say this, 'cause I'm all alone with him right now, but he's married."

"Uhhhh . . .." Dipper said.

Wendy held up the phone. "Say hi to my husband, Professor!"

Ford said loudly, "Mason, it's only me."

"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper said, loud enough to be heard even though Wendy held the phone away from her ear.

Laughing, she said, "Yeah, dude! He came to the conference to talk to another prof, but Dr., uh—what was the name, Dr. P?"

"Dr. Roy Baggett of GMU in Illinois," Ford said loudly enough to be heard. "He chairs their biology department and is an expert on invasive animal species, but he's had a long-time hobby of collecting and publishing anecdotes about cryptids. He's open-minded about the paranormal or the cryptonormal, and I'd judge him the best authority on the Thunderbird of the Southwest—"

"Get that, Dip?" Wendy asked, interrupting. "Only Dr. Baggett didn't show up at the conference, 'cause he's home sick. Anyway, there's some sort of paranormal creature or some deal in the foothills of the Rockies, and Dr. P. wanted some company to take a look at the site where it was reported, I guess."

"At night?" Dipper asked.

Wendy relayed the query.

Ford said, "Tell Mason that I hope to arrive at the site of the phenomenon at the beginning of the time window when lately people have been hearing what may be sounds produced by the creature."

Wendy translated: "People have been hearing weird stuff about this time of night. We're checking it out."

"Be careful!" Dipper said. "You know Grunkle Ford can get sort of absent-minded about not taking risks!"

"We planned for that, Dip." Wendy said. "It's cool I'll watch out."

For a moment, Dipper seemed to be at a loss for words, but then hesitantly he said, "I, uh, I talked to Steve at the garage in Gravity Falls. He thinks we can get four new tires, top of the line, for about a thousand."

"That much?" Wendy asked.

"Well—they'll last a really long time. And they're sturdy and get the best performance ratings. And I looked up the brand online—they're rated safe for up to 130 miles per hour."

Wendy laughed. "Whoa! In case we ever pull a bank job and have to make a fast getaway, huh? Well . . . if you think—"

"We can afford it," Dipper said. "And I want to be sure that my girl's driving a car with the safest tires. Steve can get us the deal—that price is actually a savings on the regular cost—and we can pay for them and pick them up on Monday at Tires United downtown in Crescent City. I just need to call him back tomorrow to give him the go-ahead. OK with you?"

"Yeah, I guess," Wendy said. "It seems like a lot, but yeah, if it's all right with you, let's do it."

"Call me when your ride with Ford is over," Dipper said. "Let me know you're safe and no monster's nibbled at your toes."

"I love you, Dip."

"Love you, too, Wen."

"May be late when I call," she warned in a softer voice.

"Doesn't matter," Dipper said. "I couldn't sleep otherwise."

"You got it," she said. "Don't forget to check in with me tomorrow after your track meet."

They hung up. Wendy chuckled. "You're really quiet, Dr. P."

"Well—I hesitated to interrupt because it seemed an intimate moment between you two young people," Ford said.

"Yeah. We always get so mushy when we discuss tires," she said. "But seriously now, tell me about this monster we're going to slay."

"Slaying may be beyond our capability," Ford said. "However, it all started back in January when I got a call at my office from Roy Baggett, with whom I first consulted as I was setting up the Institute for the Study of Anomalous Sciences—"

* * *

"Yes, thank you, Roy," Stanford said. "It's going splendidly. We're up to three hundred students and have a total of nine degree programs. We expect to expand to four hundred students next fall and to twelve programs of study. It's going very well indeed, and if you have time next fall, I'd love to host you if you'd care to address the students on the subject of cryptobiology."

Roy Baggett chuckled. "I don't often get an opportunity to do that! If we can work out the time, I'd be delighted. However, I'm calling you about something more urgent. Late next month I'm going to a conference at Colorado State University. It's concerned with my fields—biology and ecology—but I'm going for quite a different reason. Would you be amenable to meeting me there?"

"I'm always happy to see you," Stanford said. "But I assume from what you're saying that the topic of concern falls more within my field of interest than yours?"

"It's paranormal, yes," Baggett admitted. "If there's anything to it. As you know, Stanford, nine times out of ten when there's something that on the surface looks—um—"

Stanford leaned back in his desk chair, swiveling to gaze out over the front lawn of the Institute, now under a blanket of snow. Though classes were in session, thirty or forty students were out there, dark shapes against the white, creating snowmen. Or snow creatures. He could see at least one snow Sasquatch, and three of the students were very busy constructing a replica of the Loveland Frog Monster.

The silence stretched out before Stanford assisted Baggett: "Looks like nonsense," he finished, amused. "Looks like something dreamed up by woo-woos, I believe the term is. Yes, you're correct in the main, though I believe your estimate is low. It's more like ninety-nine times out of a hundred that the purported phenomenon turns out to be a hoax, mistaken observations, or unlikely but completely natural occurrences."

"Yes," Baggett said. "Exactly. Well, I have a friend on the faculty of Colorado State at Fort Collins, and she sent me a newspaper item from October that makes me wonder. Have you ever heard of the mystery of Brophy, Colorado?"

Ford swiveled away from the window, frowning in concentration. "Brophy. Brophy. No, I don't believe I have."

"I'll email you what little I've found online about it," Baggett said. "But to condense it to the bare essentials, Brophy was a small settlement about forty or fifty miles from Fort Collins. Once it was a mining community—zinc—with a maximum population in 1910 of about twelve hundred. Mining was the only major source of employment, and Brophy was a very compact settlement. It relied on a railroad that cut off its service in 1931, and it being impractical to ship the zinc ore by any other means at that time, the town dwindled until in 1934 only an estimated two hundred people remained, subsisting on farming."

"I see," Stanford said. "And am I correct in supposing that some kind of calamity occurred?"

"On the night of Friday, February 23, 1934, the town vanished."

For a moment, Stanford was silent. Then he asked, "How?"

"No one knows," Baggett said. "It was there on the afternoon of that Frday because the Post Office made a mail delivery to the general store—the only store still operating there, and the de facto post office for the community—and everything was as usual. The weather was fine, cold but clear, there was no unusual snow cover, and people were going about their normal activities. Then the next morning a distraught man showed up at a farmhouse near Stout, a community closer to Fort Collins. He was an elderly gentleman named Arthur or Arwood Hacklend. He was from Brophy, had been away overnight, and when he returned home on Saturday morning—on horseback, by the way—there was no trace of Brophy left at all. No buildings, no road beyond a certain point, and no people."

"Curious," Stanford said. "Not singular, however. There's the case of Ashley, Kansas, that simply vanished overnight in the early 1950s. Urkhammer, Iowa, is somewhat similar—every single resident just disappeared in 1928, though in that instance the buildings and farms remained behind. I take it in the case of Brophy natural causes have been ruled out?"

"I believe so," Baggett replied. "The documentation is disappointingly sparse. It wasn't even a major story in the Denver press. Evidently old Mr. Hacklend lived another five years, and though he led several attempts to find some trace of Brophy, nothing ever turned up. A couple of houses that had stood on the outskirts of the town were still there, though they had been abandoned when the mine closed and were falling to ruin even then. But no foundations, relics, or remnants of the town could be found."

"Intriguing," Stanford said. "But I take it there's something more immediate to stir your interest?"

"Yes," Baggett said. My friend on the faculty at Colorado State sent me a Halloween-themed newspaper article that featured ghostly phenomena all around the state—but it concluded with the tale that every February 23 since 1935, if one is present at the former site of Brophy between ten and eleven P.M., one hears the screams and sounds of carnage that must have accompanied the destruction of the town."

"A fairly common claim," Stanford said. "Wait, wait, could this have been something as simple as an avalanche?"

"You're very sharp, Stanford. It's true that a streak through the scatter of trees on the slopes above the town showed that trees, as well as the town, had vanished. But there was no detritus, no scatter of rocks or scree had accumulated anywhere. No, my research shows that the earliest attempts to explain the disaster attributed it to a legendary monster—the Slide Rock Bolter."

* * *

Stanford had been recounting the story in detail, but he slowed the car and muttered, "I have the GPS coordinates of the former Brophy in my satellite-map assist device—"

"GPS," Wendy said. "That's what it's called. You just said that."

"Yes, well, frankly the modern habit of initializing everything sometimes confuses me. However, we have to look out for a very eroded trail that once was a road heading west from here. Help me look."

It was only a half-mile farther on. Wendy said, "Pretty much has to be that turn, Dr. P. Looks real rough. Can the Lincoln handle that?"

"Assuredly," Ford said. "The Agency has reinforced the suspension, and I'm confident the other modifications have made the car fully capable of handling a dirt road."

"I'm not sure I'd even call this a road," Wendy said as they jounced along. "So what is a Slide Rock Bolter?"

Stanford sighed. "It's a tall tale, Wendy. Back in the nineteenth century, lumberjacks—no offense to your father, now—spun wild yarns to mystify or horrify greenhorns."

Wendy laughed out loud. "Dude, let me tell you—'lumberjack,' that's what we're called when we're showing off at games like log rolling, greased-pole climbing, and competitive tree-felling. A working guy's a logger. And 'greenhorn?' I don't think I've ever heard that word outside of a movie. It's true, though, that loggers flat love to tell people wild stories. Anyway, what's the monster supposed to be?"

"A mountain whale," Ford said.

"Get out of town."

"No, that's the story," Ford told her. It's a gigantic creature made of stone. It's shaped like a whale, but it lives on mountaintops. In the depths of night, if humans are in the neighborhood, the creature flings itself down the mountain slope, its mouth gaping wide, to engulf and devour everything in its path. Its tail ends in hooks that it fastens over the mountain summit, so once it's fed, it drags its body back up the slope. And being made of stone, it blends in undetectably with the mountainside."

"That was a rough one," Wendy said as the car jounced over a sharp bump in the road. "You don't believe in—"

"It would be impossible for any terrestrial material creature to feed itself enough to support that much bulk," Ford said.

The GPS began to beep.

"We there?" Wendy asked. Outside, the night was dark. A half-moon showed now and then through breaks in a high cloud cover, but through the obscuring clouds it did little to lift the gloom.

"The site is about a hundred meters ahead," Ford said, braking. "I want you to remain here in the car, Wendy, with the engine running—"

"What? After we came all this far? No way!" Wendy said. "I just wish I had an axe!"

Ford sighed. "Just in case something happens to me—and I'm armed, never fear—I rely on you to get back to civilization and bring help."

"Nuh-uh," Wendy said. "I wouldn't let Dipper go alone into some danger, and I won't let you. If you want, I'll stay about thirty yards behind you, but just in case—I want to be on the spot."

"I admire your courage," Ford said. "Well—if you're determined. Let me equip you."

They got out into a freezing wind—the temperature was down somewhere in the twenties—and Ford donned a long hooded coat and gave Wendy a scarf to wrap around over her chin, ears, and nose. They stood by the opened car trunk as Ford pulled out a couple of carbine-length rifles, though they actually were quantum destablilizers. "These are set on wide beam," Ford warned. "Don't fire unless you have a clear shot. The power is low enough so the target won't be disintegrated, but it'll paralyze anything up to the size of an elephant, and it could kill a human."

Wendy pulled on her gloves before accepting the weapon. "Gotcha."

At that moment, out of the west, out of the cold, out of the dark there came a low rumbling roar.

It might not be a land whale.

But it definitely sounded monstrous.


	5. Chapter 5

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**5**

To Dipper, time just crawled by. He had a new book underway, a retelling of his and Mabel's adventure with the copy machine and the party-hearty competition in the Shack. He was calling it "Doubles Troubles" at the moment, but titles always seemed to change along the way.

Anyway, he had outlined the plot in a twenty-page summary, adding some bits and pieces to fictionalize the story—in the book, Tripper—not a dog, but the nickname of the fictional Alexis Palms, the male twin—would create a good many copy-machine clones of himself not only to impress Willow, a cool, laid-back, beautiful redheaded teen, but also to do his share of work around Mysterious Manor, owned by his and his sister Alexa's great-uncle Manny. He had decided to have Alexa create her own doubles, and that complicated things considerably.

Cascadia, a satirical version of Pacifica (richest girl in Granite Rapids, gorgeous, but a stunning brunette with midnight hair and other details changed), was emerging in the series as Alexa's nemesis, and she had a big role to play in the story, although Dipper was being kinder to her than Mabel had been in real life—in the book, Cascadia was learning not to be so mean and overbearing, and she had a good side that not everyone saw.

Anyway.

He was on the fifth chapter, when Alexa, realizing that Alex now has two duplicates to help do his work, creates her own double. The trouble was—or would be, because at this point it was just developing—at this stage of the saga, Alexa was still thoughtlessly selfish too often, and her clone would become obnoxious in her mirroring of Alexa's behavior.

Dipper thought the chapter was funny, but he was losing focus in it because he liked writing about Alexa and her deliberately goofy, upbeat personality. He knocked off after an hour. The manuscript wasn't due at the publishers until May, and his rough draft was practically half done.

It was only eight P.M. at that point. He hoped Wendy and Ford weren't getting themselves in trouble. Dang it, ever since he had returned from his exile in the Multiverse, Ford was a magnet for weirdness. Paranormal creatures and phenomena were drawn to him.

Mabel was taking a long, long soak in the tub—he could hear the water running now and again as she warmed it up with another injection of hot water—and Dipper thought, "I'll bet she's on the phone to Teek."

Teek, Mabel's fiancé, was in his second term in film school way off across the country in Atlanta, Georgia. The two of them called each other at least every other day, and on Friday nights they loved to face-time. Of course, Mabel was probably naked in the tub, but Dipper and Wendy knew that as an officially engaged couple, Mabel and Teek had gone somewhat further than her brother and his fiancée had.

On the other hand, Dipper and Wendy _had_ skinny-dipped together, and they had, um, stimulated each other because their touch-telepathy could rouse up strong emotional and physical feelings as well as communicate ideas, so . . ..

Teek was nineteen and responsible, Mabel was eighteen and, well, Mabel, and Wendy had arranged for Mabel to protect herself. If they wanted to do naked chats, Dipper didn't think it was his place to condemn them. However, in Atlanta it was now past eleven P.M. He was just thinking that maybe he should go tap on Mabel's door and suggest that Teek probably needed his sleep and she was probably getting pruny when Mabel walked right in on him, startling him.

He looked around from his computer—he was in the study room, which originally had been a nursery and adjoined his and Wendy's bedroom—and Mabel stretched and yawned. She was already dressed for bed, in her floppy-disk sleep shirt and shorty pajamas. "That was so nice," she said. "Teek's working on a big student film project. He's the cinematographer and set designer. It sounds interesting. I can't wait to see it! What're you doing, Brobro?"

"A little writing," he said. "I've only done four pages, but I think I'll stop."

"Missing her, huh?" Mabel asked.

Dipper saved his file and switched off the laptop. "How'd you guess?"

"Your general mopey tone. Plus you never stop until you've written ten pages. Don't worry, Dip. It's good to have a little alone time now and then."

"I suppose." He stood and stretched. "Think I'll veg out in front of the TV. Want to watch a crappy movie with me?"

"What kind?" she asked. "A comedy?"

"No, I guess you'd call it a horror flick."

"Real scary?"

He laughed. "No, not really. It's an old Japanese movie called _Terror of Mushroom Island,_ but it's not gory or anything. It's about some people who get shipwrecked on an island where these mutated mushrooms infect them and turn them into mushroom-human hybrids, too. The makeup and special effects aren't scary, and there aren't any jump scares or anything."

"You've seen it before."

"Um, yeah, once."

"With Wendy?"

"No, I caught it online a couple of years ago, back home."

"And it's not too scary?"

Dipper rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, not as scary as some of the things we saw in Gravity Falls. Oh, hey, that reminds me—want to go to Cartoon Con this summer?"

Mabel tilted her head. "That big old geek-a-rama in San Diego? Didn't we do that once already?"

"No," he said. "We went to one in the alternate universe when we were trying to banish a ghost for the Admiral, remember?"

"Yeah, of course I do," she said, "There was a cartoon show about our lives, and we entered the masquerade as ourselves, and we only won second place!" She balled her fists. "Second! Place! Even though everybody thought we looked like Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy—uh, and that guy from their world who dressed up like Soos, what was his name, he was pretty good, too. Second place! The humiliation!"

"Well," Dipper said, "the TV people are going to preview the first episode of _Granite Rapids_ there, and they've offered to pay my way, make me a guest, sponsor a book signing—and I can bring a publicist, an assistant, and a guest. And you can meet all sorts of celebrities there—"

"Summer? When?" Mabel asked.

"It's after college ends for the summer. June seventh through tenth."

"Teek? Can he go?"

"Sure," Dipper said. "I can probably get the company to pay for his ticket and all, or we can buy him one. Or if he's willing, he could be my publicist. Just give him a camera and have him click away."

"I wanna be your publicist! Teek will be your assistant, and Wendy can be your guest!"

"Fine, fine, I'm good with that. Couple of things, though," Dipper said. "First, I want to tell Wendy the news myself. I just got the letter this afternoon. Second, remember I'll be going as Stan X. Mason, not as Mason Pines or Dipper Pines. You'll have to call me Stan or something while we're there."

Mabel rocked back on her heels and shot him with twin finger-pistols. "Can do! You are Stan the Man!"

"OK. Soon as Wendy gets back, I'm going to confirm with the company. The first episode of the cartoon will be _Bride of the Zombie,_ part 1. It looks like they're making three episodes from each book, with maybe side episodes that don't have anything to do with my novels. The first season's supposed to run thirteen episodes. Oh, want to hear something that will make you feel really creepy?"

"I don't know," Mabel said. "Creepy intrigued or creepy pee-my-pants scared?"

"It's not scary. This is a password-protected site right now. Hang on." He turned his laptop back on and went online. "OK, this will go public in April. This is the show's web page. Here's the opening titles. Watch."

The video began with a bus cruising past a water tower looming out of some woods, with the town name GRANITE RAPIDS on its side. Grunkle Manny stood outside the Mystery Manor, wearing his black suit, bowtie, and fez and grinning at the camera. Then Alexis and Alexa arrived on the bus, toured through some weird exhibits in the museum, stood in the forest with Manny as Gnarls—the show's version of Gnomes—spied on them and a Sasquatch walked casually past without their noticing. The individual characters were introduced—Alexa in her colorful sweater, Alexis investigating a cave and finding a strange skeleton, Manny counting money and grinning, Moose the handyman hiding in a bush as a small pterodactyl soared past, and Willow sitting at the cash register with her feet propped on the counter.

Then the title, GRANITE RAPIDS, looking as if the letters had been carved from stone, popped up.

"Did that music sound familiar?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah—just like the theme song to the cartoon _Gravity Falls_ show. Hand-clapping and everything! How did they know?"

"I think the composer is our dimension's version of the other dimension's composer," Dipper said. "You remember how the cartoon characters we saw there were so much like us."

"Not really. Not in looks, though," Mabel said. "I'm much more stunning."

"Well—these cartoon characters don't look very much like us either," Dipper said. "But, you know, cartoons versus reality. Hey, it's time for the movie. Want to pop some popcorn?"

So they popped the corn, dumped it in a big bowl and salted and buttered it, and finally sat on the sofa in the living room to watch _Terror of Mushroom Island._ Mabel didn't have the patience to follow the plot closely, and she didn't MST3K the movie the way Dipper and Wendy liked to do, but she got in one wisecrack. When the ship's captain, his face sprouting mushrooms and his fingers gaining mushroom caps, shambled after the female star and she screamed, "Get away from me!" Mabel came up with a zinger: "Aw, give me a chance. Just one date. Can't you see I'm a fungi?"

The movie was not very long—it ended before ten-thirty. Mabel let Tripper outside, they waited until he came back in, and then, glancing at Dipper, she said, "Hey, Brobro, I'm gonna let Tripper sleep in your room tonight, OK?"

He smiled at her. "So I won't be lonely?"

"Got it in one," she said. She cupped Tripper's chin and told the dog, "Wendy's away and Dipper needs company so he won't feel lonely. You sleep on his bed tonight. Don't crowd him, and stay on top of the cover. Do you understand?"

Tripper yipped.

Dipper turned off the TV and stood up. "Come on, then," he said to the dog. "Mabel, turn out the living-room light, OK?"

"I'm on it. Hey, first, does Alexa have her grappling hook?"

"I haven't seen the episode myself," Dipper said. "But if the script follows the book, you know she has."

"Grappling hook!" Mabel said, doing an air-punch. "Go ahead, Broseph, I got the lights." The switches were on the wall beside the door to the mud room, closer to her bedroom than Wendy's and Dipper's.

Dipper took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and pulled on a tee shirt and sleep shorts. Tripper already lay on the foot of the king-sized bed. "You ought to have plenty of room," Dipper told him.

He got beneath the sheets, clicked off the bedside light, and whispered, "Goodnight, Wendy. I love you. Stay safe."

At that time it was closing in on eleven P.M.

In Colorado it was almost midnight.

And that was the time when Wendy discovered that being safe might not be all that easy.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**6**

"What was that?" Ford asked, stopping so short that Wendy almost walked into him.

"It's not a rock whale," Wendy said. "I think it's—wait, I see lights up ahead."

"Oh, I forgot!" Ford said. He fumbled in the pockets of his long coat. "Here, these are night-vision. Let's put them on."

Wendy grunted in irritation. She had to take off her gloves—she took the middle fingers between her teeth to tug them off—before she could fasten the goggles around her head and over her eyes. "How do you turn 'em on?"

"Just—fasten—the strap—there, mine are on. My word!"

She clamped the lightweight quantum destablizer carbine between her right arm and her side and reached around. The buckle on the strap got tangled in her hair, but finally she managed to fasten it, and immediately the world lit up—not in green, like on those TV shows that Dipper liked to watch, but in very clear shades of gray. It was like watching a black-and-white movie, but in high definition.

There stood Ford, gazing ahead. He tucked his own carbine, less than three feet long, inside his overcoat. Around them, Wendy could see rolling low hills, no signs of any house or ruins, and far ahead—"People," she said.

"People and motorbikes," Ford told her. "I should have realized that with a legend of ghostly goings-on and a college only miles away, young people would be bound to show up on the night that purported ghosts walk. Come on—wait, do you think that sound we heard means something dangerous?"

"Definitely," she said. "Dr. P, these may be bikers, you know. Hard guys."

"Hard or soft, we need to warn them they may be in trouble. Looks like nine of them. Can you hide your destabilizer inside your coat?"

She did, tucking it under her belt. "Yeah, got it."

The people up ahead didn't seem to be aware of them. They stood in a tight group, shining flashlights toward the slope ahead of them. Wendy could count seven motorcycles, but from what she could see, at least the people ahead weren't Hell's Angels. They were bundled up in an assortment of jackets, leather and fur, but none of them had gang insignia, as far as she could see.

Now they were close enough for her to hear their murmuring voices. A girl said, "I don't like how that sounded. Seriously, I want to leave."

Other voices, male and female, overrode her. Somebody said something and laughed, but the laugh sounded more nervous than amused.

"What's that?" a guy asked, and they turned toward Ford and Wendy, shining their lights toward the two as they approached. "Hey, who are you?"

"I got this," Wendy said quietly to Ford. "Follow my lead." She raised her voice: "Do you know you're on private land?"

"Who are you?" the largest of the guys, and Ford seemed to be right, because he sure looked like a college football player, yelled in a belligerent way.

"W.B. Pines, attorney for the Brophy Family Trust!" she snapped, sounding dead serious. "The gentleman with me is Filbrick Stanford, a private detective working for the Brophy family. He is licensed to carry firearms. I'm putting you on notice, and this is your only warning. You all are subject to charges of trespassing."

"Chet," a girl's voice whined, "I told you! This is stupid, and I'm freezing! I want to go!"

"That," growled Stanford, affecting a tough-guy Jersey accent, "would be wise. Leave now, don't come back, and—Attorney Pines, I believe you won't press charges?"

"Colorado law makes trespassing punishable by a thousand-dollar fine and a year in prison. But I won't push it if they leave now. Like in the next thirty seconds!" she snapped, sounding angry.

"Geeze, there weren't any signs. It's not worth it, guys. Come on," one of the boys said. He climbed onto a motorcycle, and one of the girls rode double, her arms around his waist. The guy kicked the bike into life and they roared away.

The other seven kind of milled uncertainly—and then from far upslope came another deep-throated fierce roar, and a rock the size of a bowling all came cracking and bouncing down the stony slope, off to the left.

The roar and rock decided the issue, and the remaining people hopped on motorcycles and zoomed away, though the biggest guy lingered and deliberately rode so close to Stanford and Wendy that his rear wheel kicked sand against them.

Ford turned, watching them go, but Wendy kept an eye on the slope. "They're really going," Ford said. "A thousand-dollar fine and a year in jail? How did you know that?"

"I lied," Wendy said. "Stan taught me that—'If you gotta bluff,' he always told me, 'bluff big!' Where'd you come up with your hard-boiled private-eye voice?"

"Actually, that's my impression of my father's voice," Stanford said.

The rumble of the motorcycles faded. "They stopping?" Wendy asked.

But then immediately, the cycles roared away. Ford gazed into the distance. "They've passed the car. I—"

The rumbling animal roar came again, closer now. "I think I know what that is," Wendy said. She pulled the destabilizer carbine from inside her coat. "It's up there close to the summit, but I think it's stalking us now. You say these guns can stun living things?"

"I'm eighty per cent sure," Ford said. "Let me make sure yours is switched on." He reached over and touched a button just in front of the trigger, and Wendy felt the weapon vibrate as it powered up. Another rock fell, not far away and not a small one. "Is there someone up there trying to start an avalanche?"

"No, not someone. An animal," Wendy said. "It's either shoving loose rocks aside or shoving them over the cliff, trying to kill us with them. I'd bet you anything that the town got wiped out by a landslide after all. But this thing didn't start it. They don't live that long. It must have a den up there—"

"What are you talking about?" Ford asked. "I can't see anything moving up there."

"I think it's something that came along years and years after the town of Brophy vanished," Wendy said. The roar, now frighteningly close, came again. "Sounds to me like something they call a ghost bear."

"A ghost—" Ford began.

But the sound of claws on rocks interrupted him. Something huge and dark was charging toward them.

* * *

In Belleville, Illinois—a suburb of St. Louis—at that same moment, a nurse woke up Dr Roy Baggett. "Time for your breathing treatment!" she said just as chirpily as if it were a bright sunny morning and not the middle of the night.

Roy Baggett, sixty-three and two years away from retirement from Greater Midwestern University, grumbled as the nurse raised up the head of his bed. "I'd be fine if you'd let me go home," he told her.

"Not my decision, love," the nurse said. With the efficiency of long practice, she put the breathing mask on his face and turned on the steroid feed.

A white fog filled the transparent mask, and he breathed it in. "I should be in Colorado tonight," he told her, his voice sounding hollow because of the plastic mask.

"Well, you're stuck in the hospital. It's helped. You've improved a lot. Don't you feel better?"

"I'd feel much better at home," Baggett griped. "How's my blood oxygen?"

"Not bad," she said. "Ninety-five."

"It was eighty-eight when I was admitted two days go," Baggett said. "I think I'm about over the bronchitis."

"It's three days now not two. Your temp is normal," the nurse said. "Deep breaths, now. Any wheezing?"

"A little," he admitted. "Not nearly as bad as it was when I came to the hospital."

She scribbled on his chart. "Just between us—and don't quote me to the doctors—I think you'll probably go home on Monday," she said. "Dr. Claude will probably have you do a stress test if you're up to that—"

"Perfectly up to it right now," Baggett said.

"But he won't be on duty until Monday. Well, I'll leave you for a while. That has to run for an hour. Do you want to watch TV? Need the remote?"

"No, thank you. But hand me that book on the night stand."

"Can you read without your glasses?"

"I wouldn't ask for the book if I couldn't."

"Now, now, don't be grumpy. This is helping you."

"I wouldn't be so grumpy if you nurses didn't keep waking me up at night to give me a sleeping pill," he snapped. "There. I'm fine. If I need anything, I'll ring."

The nurse looked at the read-outs from the medical monitors. "I'll be back in about forty-five minutes. Don't take off the mask or fiddle with it."

"No, Nanny," Baggett said. Then, as the nurse headed for the hospital-room door, he called, "Thank you. I realize that when I'm sick, I tend to sound grouchier than I really am."

"Well!" the nurse said, smiling broadly. "You're welcome!"

Baggett squirmed a little in the bed to achieve a sitting posture. It was going to be tiresome, holding the book up, but it had been delivered from Interlibrary Loan the same morning he'd had to go to the hospital, and he wanted to study it in more detail.

He read from near the end of a chapter:

* * *

_The Slide Rock Bolter has been reported in several areas of Colorado, all of them in mountainous or steeply hilly areas. Most of these cases have proven to be ordinary rockslides. Mischievous loggers delighted in fooling newcomers by describing a fanciful rock-bodied behemoth whose gaping maw could swallow an entire town at a gulp._

_The most famous basis for this story in the twentieth century is the mysterious case of Brophy, Colorado, a small town that completely vanished in the 1930s. For decades, the story was that no physical trace of the town or its populace could be discovered, and the oldest accounts claimed there was no evidence of a landslide._

_However, in 1969 a small archaeological expedition led by Thomas Chapman excavated a half-acre site and discovered under eight feet of rubble and scree the remains of a flattened wood structure that turned out to be the only store in Brophy. Its burial strongly suggests that the original stories were mistaken or exaggerated and that, after all, the disappearance of Brophy was not something supernatural, but due to a landslide._

* * *

"Damn it," Baggett swore to himself. "I wish I hadn't fallen ill last Wednesday! Or even that I had Stanford Pines's telephone number!"

Of course, ordinarily he could call Stanford's office at that Institute of his, off in—um, California? Washington? Oregon? Baggett couldn't even remember. There was always the Internet, always telephone information, but he didn't have a laptop or tablet with him, his wife was so concerned about his not getting worked up that she refused to bring in either tablet or computer, and tomorrow was Saturday, when the Institute would likely be closed—

He wished he could at least persuade Jacqueline to bring in his address book. Baggett had never created a contact list for his cell phone. Anyway, he didn't have his charging cord, and the phone lay battery-dead on the nightstand. He couldn't use the in-room phone for outside calls without going through an in-hospital switchboard, and Baggett was just paranoid enough not to risk having certain conversations overheard.

"Sorry, Stanford," he muttered. "Wild-goose chase. Well, at least you're safe." The breathing treatment was making him feel sleepy, and he laid the book aside and closed his eyes. "At least there's no monster to threaten you."

* * *

"Hit the dirt!" Wendy yelled. "I got this!"

Stanford raised his quantum destabilizer carbine but Wendy elbowed him aside as from the dark something huge and shapeless even when seen through the night-vision goggles came hurtling down the slope, straight at the two of—

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**7**

One moment Stanford was trying to aim his destabilizer at the formless dark shadow that from the night rushed toward him too fast for comprehension, and the next Wendy had roughly shoved him aside.

Scrambling for balance, Ford felt his feet tangle, and then he went sprawling, losing his grip on his destabilizer, crashing on his left side hard enough to momentarily lose his breath. He heard Wendy yell, "Roll!" and before his brain had even sent the message to his muscles. he rolled, further losing both his night-vision goggles and his glasses.

He ended the roll on the stony surface, face-up, the ground cold and hard and grainy pressing against his shoulders and butt. For a moment the whole world rocked a little, like a plate stood on edge and spun clattering down to rest. Ford gasped cold air and everything steadied.

The half moon sailed between broken clouds that sometimes hid it, sometimes revealed it. In the half-light, dimly, he saw the blurry shape of Wendy stand high on tiptoe, spread out her coat with one hand, and then she roared, louder than Ford would have thought possible, "GRAHHH!"

The roar made Ford wince, made him aware that in falling he had struck his head against the ground hard enough to raise a throbbing lump on his left temple.

Things moved in the darkness. Claws scrabbled as the shadowy dark thing, whatever it was, skidded to a halt only a few feet away from Wendy and backed off. A nauseating, skunk-like stench washed over Ford.

Wendy turned away from Ford, keeping the shape in front of her, and sidestepped, still yelling in that loud voice, "Stay put and don't move at all! Stay quiet! It's stalking me now!"

The shape, whatever, tried to circle around, but remained a constant twenty feet from Wendy, taking stealthy steps, she mirrored it—as far as he could tell. Without the goggles, without his glasses, everything was just blurs of darkness painted on more darkness. Ford had the impression the sinister shape was quadrupedal, but even on four feet, it was very nearly as tall as Wendy was.

When it was on the far side of Wendy, Ford cautiously felt around, found the goggles, and moving slowly and as quietly as he could, he fastened them on. Vision returned—annoyingly blurred because his spectacles were still on the ground somewhere, but he could tell that Wendy, now off to his right and about fifty feet away, had leaped atop a boulder the size of a coffee table and balanced there.

"You want to try it?" Wendy challenged, standing with legs spread apart and her left hand still spreading out one side of her coat. From the pose of her right shoulder, Ford guessed she was covering the thing with her quantum destabilizer, held in the crook of her right arm, her finger on the trigger. She yelled, "Look, I'm bigger'n you! BACK OFF, MAN!"

Beyond her, now seventy feet from Ford, the creature rose to hind legs and swayed as though not sure what it should do. Wendy had called it a ghost bear—but it looked solid and not ethereal as ghosts tended to do, and as much as Ford could see of it, it was not all that bear-like, at least to his myopic vision. It was more like a black storm cloud come down to earth than anything else.

Ford, with only his aching head raised, continued to move his arms, almost as slow as the minute-hand of an old-fashioned clock would tick along. Somewhere on the ground out there lay his quantum destabilizer, and somewhere else his spectacles—

The dark shape roared. That made it sound substantial enough.

Ford heard the electronic buzz that preceded a destabilizer beam by less than one full second, the high-pitched zap of the pistol discharge and then the shape slammed into the rock, and Wendy went tumbling off—

And just after the nick of time, Ford closed his hand on the cold barrel of his own destabilizer carbine.

"I'm over here!" he yelled, jumping to his feet and staggering a little, still dazed.

The dark mass had toppled backward from the boulder and lay in a heap on the ground. It did not move or roar.

But—and this was the horrible thing—as he walked toward the boulder, his knees shaking so hard he felt about to fall, Ford could neither see nor hear Wendy.

* * *

Eleven hundred miles to the west of where the town of Brophy once stood, Dipper dozed for a few seconds, woke again, tossed and turned, and continually glanced at the bedside clock. The sea-green numerals had a strange reluctance to change. The display stayed stuck at 11:51 for at least half an hour, he thought.

"Call me, call me," Dipper told Wendy. Not that she could hear him. If only their telepathy didn't require skin-to-skin touch!

Tripper caught the scent of Dipper's anxiety and whimpered. He crept up on his belly to lick Dipper's cheek, offering whatever reassurance a dog could.

Dipper patted him. At this rate, he thought, he'd be in no shape for the track meet tomorrow. At least the competition wasn't scheduled to take place far away, this time—in fact, Western Alliance University was hosting the Compton University team—and it wasn't even going to be a full track-and-field event, just the sprints, middle-distance races, the hundred and four hundred-meter hurdles, and the relays.

No field events, no broad jumps, pole vaults, javelin throws or shot puts. Strictly speaking, it was just a track meet, not track and field. The WAU running team was competing with Compton's junior-varsity runners, and the stakes were not very high.

Dipper decided he could afford to sleep in until nine and easily drive in to WAU before eleven, be there in plenty of time for the abbreviated contest, but it was very difficult for him to sleep late, because no matter what he usually woke early, and—

Great, he told himself, now I'm angsting out about _two_ things.

Come on, man. Wendy might not even get back to her conference until midnight—her time, there in Colorado, which would be one A.M. here. However, Dipper reminded himself, if they were off on some kind of supernatural quest, Ford was all too likely to lose track of time. But Wendy was cool, level-headed, and she wouldn't hesitate to remind Ford that she had to get back.

Gah! The clock seemed frozen.

Giving up on sleep, Dipper sat up in bed and found the TV remote on the nightstand on Wendy's side. He turned the set on. Ford and Fiddleford had set the entertainment system in the house to receive, free, cable and satellite feeds from all around the world. Thousands of shows and nothing that Dipper was the least interested in watching alone.

He channel-surfed until he found something soothing—evidently a flower-and-garden show. It was Japanese, so he couldn't understand the dialogue, but the pictures were soothing and brightly colored. English subtitles were not available for the program.

Since Dipper couldn't understand the language anyway, he turned the sound off and watched a very serious-looking, thin man wearing square-rimmed spectacles. He worked incredibly fast and evidently explained his actions to a lively, petite pretty woman as he demonstrated bonsai techniques. With a flourish and a broad smile, the man stepped back and the camera got a closeup of a tiny Japanese fig tree, perfect in every detail.

The woman then said something into a microphone and a commercial came on. That segued into shots of colorful blossom-laden cherry trees, waving gracefully in the breeze. An unreadable Japanese caption flowed across the screen.

Dipper watched what felt like half an hour of the show. Tripper snoozed next to him.

He checked the clock again. 12:10.

Damn.

Tripper sighed and wriggled a little, finding a more comfortable position. His eyes were closed, and the dog looked completely relaxed.

"You'd know if Wendy were in trouble, right?" Dipper asked. "You've got, like, animal ESP?"

Tripper sighed but didn't answer.

"Darn it. Damn it," Dipper murmured, pounding his right hand quietly on the bed. "Grunkle Ford, why do you have to get us into this kind of trouble? She'd better be OK, that's all."

Dipper looked across the bed at his own phone, in its charging stand on his bedside table. He could call—

Except Wendy and he had agreed together to work on Dipper's insecurities. And Wendy was planning to call him, not vice-versa. If he broke down and made the first move, he'd tease him about not trusting her . . . tease, sure, not maliciously, but what would she be thinking?

"If she doesn't call by one o'clock," Dipper told the sleeping Tripper, "then I'll call her. Just to check. And if she thinks I'm weird for that, I'll . . . just . . . deal with it. OK, that's the plan."

Tripper rolled over, raised his head and shook himself so hard his perky triangular ears flapped, and started up at him.

"It's not your fault," Dipper assured the little brown dog. "It's just me being uncertain. Just me missing Wendy. Me hoping she's . . . she's OK."

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**8**

Dipper's phone went off, he spasmodically grabbed for it and knocked it off its base, and it clattered to the floor. He nearly fell out of bed making a grab for it. The screen was lit up, showing him where it was. Reaching further, he snagged it but tumbled to the floor, Tripper hopped down beside him, anxiously whining, and he shoved himself a sitting position, leaning against the bed, fending off Tripper with his right hand while answering the ring—Wendy's tone!—with his right. "Hi, hello!" he said.

He heard a deep thrumming industrial sort of sound, which nearly masked Wendy's voice, yelling over it: "Dip? Wait a minute, dude!"

Dipper glanced up at the bedside clock. The glowing numerals stood at 1:27. "What's going on?" he yelled into the phone.

Then a thunk muted the throbbing sounds. "That better?"

"Yeah, what's all the noise?" Dipper asked, his heart beating too fast. "I hear—"

"It's a helicopter, Dip," she said.

Dipper sighed. "Oh, no. Did Grunkle Ford have to call in the Agency—"

"No, no, I called for the choppers. Forest and Wildlife guys. They're relocating a bear."

"Relocating what?" Dipper asked. "Wendy, please, where are you?"

"Out in the hills, west of the campus. Long way, 'bout an hour's drive. Sorry to be calling you so late, but stuff has been goin' on, and I promised to call you, and—anyway. I'm gonna try to sleep while Ford drives us back to the conference. There they go."

The _whappa-whappa-whappa_ sound became more treble, then faded gradually. "All right," Wendy said. "I'll give you the short version now and fill you in Sunday evening. Your Grunkle Ford came to the conference because there were rumors that not far from the Colorado State campus there was this really bizarre monster that, like, ate a whole town—"

"Whoa!"

"Yeah, no, don't get too interested. It didn't pan out. But like back in the Depression, this town called Brophy vanished, and people claimed a giant monster came out of the hills and ate it and all the people and junk. Today was the anniversary, and beginning a year or two ago, people were claiming they heard ghosts or some deal up in the hills on this date every year, 'round ten o'clock to midnight or something."

Dipper felt fully awake at last. "So—Ford took you ghost hunting?"

"Yeah, he was supposed to meet this professor, but that guy got sick and couldn't—long story short, OK? It wasn't a ghost, it was a ghost bear. Which is not a ghost. It's flesh-and-blood. God, what time is it? Getting on for two-thirty! What's that, one-thirty California time? Man, I'm so sorry for calling this late. Anyway, it was rough, Ford got a bump on the head and I got the wind knocked out of me, but bottom line, we got through basically unhurt. Not seriously hurt, anyhow. Here comes Ford toward the car, so I guess we're clear to leave. Go back to sleep, Dip. Call me tomorrow after your meet. Get some sleep. Just know we're all OK, and I love you, man!"

"OK," Dipper said reluctantly. "I'm so relieved to hear that. Love you too, Magic Girl. I can't wait to see you again on Sunday."

He heard Ford's voice, off-mike: "I'll drive back to the campus, Wendy. You try to nap."

"Just telling Dip everything's OK," Wendy said. "Goodnight, Dip. I love you lots."

"Good night. I'll call tomorrow," Dipper said.

She hung up, and Dipper got back into bed. He turned on the lamp long enough for Tripper to leap up onto the bed. Switching the light off, Dipper rolled on his side, with Tripper curled up against his back. He didn't get back to sleep until two in the morning, California time.

* * *

Unusually for the Pines twins, later that morning Mabel was up and about first. She came and tapped on Dipper's door. "Come in," he said as Tripper hopped down from the bed.

"Hey, Dipdop!" Mabel said, opening the door and leaning down to pat Tripper. "Whoops, let me go unlatch the doggy door. Tripper's doing the potty dance!" She was back in a minute. "Close call, but he's out watering the lawn now. It's half-past nine, Dip, don't you have to get up and shower and—Look at how red your eyes are! Couldn't you sleep? Wait, did Wendy even—"

"She called," Dipper said. "I don't know everything, but she and Ford went ghost hunting and found a bear, she said. The Colorado Wildlife people somehow got involved. Anyhow, I guess I got close to seven hours of sleep, so I'll be OK."

"You take your shower and get dressed, Dip. I'll put on coffee and start some breakfast. After, I'll drive you into campus and stay for the meet. Hey, what do you want for breakfast, anyway?"

"Nothing heavy," Dipper said. "Not before I have to run. How about some oatmeal and whole-wheat toast?"

"With strawberries?" Mabel asked.

"Do we have any?"

"Yeah, I got some for smoothies, and there's enough left."

"That's fine," Dipper said.

He stood in the warm shower longer than he really needed. He felt some of the tension easing out of his muscles. Finally he got to the table about nine forty-five. Mabel had sliced the strawberries vertically, so the slices looked like little random Valentine hearts scattered over the surface of the oatmeal. He chuckled. "Nice touch."

He cut his toast into two triangles and buttered them. Mable poured his coffee and passed the cream pitcher over. "This is just half-and-half," she said.

Dipper put cream in his coffee and then poured a little over the hot cereal. "Brown sugar," Mabel said, passing over the plastic container in which they kept it so it wouldn't become a sugar rock. She handed him a spoon, and he sprinkled only a teaspoon over his oatmeal.

"Good, Sis," Dipper said, his mouth full.

"Thanks, but all you gotta do is dump the cereal into the boiling water with a pinch of salt and stir. Hey, I unloaded the dishwasher, so when we finish we just rinse the dishes and load 'em in."

Dipper said, "You know, I think face-timing Teek naked puts you in a really good mood!"

"Um—yeah," Mabel said, not even blushing. "Well, he seems to like it!"

"It's OK," Dipper said. "I'm not criticizing. Being married kinda puts stuff like that in perspective."

"On my calendar," she said, "I'm crossing off the days until Spring Break week."

"I'm telling you," Dipper said, "Make your airline reservations now. Most of the colleges in the country have Spring Break the same week, and if you want to fly out and see Teek, you'd better make arrangements."

"Aw, who goes to Atlanta for Spring break?"

"Maybe nobody," Dipper said, "but everybody who goes to Florida pretty much has to go through Atlanta or make connections there."

"And lots of people do want to go to Florida," she said.

"So reserve your seats now. Remember, you'll either have to drive all the way to Oakland or Portland, or else fly to Denver from Rogue Valley and make a connection to Atlanta."

"I'll do it. Can I use your and Wendy's credit card?" Mabel asked. "I mean, I'll pay you guys back, but all I got's my debit card, and Dad made me promise not to do stuff like make reservations with it."

"Sure," Dipper said. "Tell you what: This evening after we get home from the meet, we'll go online and you can make your reservations."

They finished eating, rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, Mabel left the doggy door unlatched so Tripper could move from the house to the back yard whenever necessary, and then they took Mabel's car, Black Beauty, in to the WAU campus.

Dipper continued to the gym—the track was right behind it—and waited to meet the rest of the team. Mabel called Eloise, she came over, and the girls walked to the duck pond just off-campus. Feeding the ducks bread was forbidden, but you could get a handful of duck food from a dispenser for a quarter. The two girls sat on a bench and the year-round ducks—there were some visitors who only appeared in the summers—came swimming over to field the food the girls tossed.

Mabel and Eloise caught up on what was going on in their lives, Eloise said she'd tag along to the track meet—she'd never seen one—and they talked about Spring Break and what they planned to do with their boyfriends. "I've never been to Georgia," Eloise said. "Well, I guess we flew there the year I was fifteen, but then we went on to Disney World."

"Dip and I went to Disney World when we were real little," Mabel said. "I'd like to go back some time. I don't even remember a lot of what we did and saw there. It's a whole lot bigger than Disneyland."

"I've never been there," Eloise said. We only visited California once—that was when I first met Dipper at the Westminster House. Did he tell you about that?"

"Oh, yeah," Mabel said. "The ghosts and the hidden rooms and all that. I'm surprised it didn't freak you out."

"It did, Eloise said. "But we kind of helped each other get through it. You guys have done a lot of that kind of thing—ghost hunting, I mean."

"You bet we have!" Mabel said. "Some time you have got to visit us in Gravity Falls. There's always something weird going on there. I think it's not as bad since we got rid of Bill Cipher—when he went away, a bunch of weirdness got pulled with him, but Grunkle Ford says that Gravity Falls is still the top place for paranormal junk in the whole country! We're number one!"

"I've heard so much about it, I'd love to visit if we can work it out," Eloise said.

Mabel checked the time. "The meet's gonna start in thirty minutes. Let's pick up some lunch and then we'll go get seats. It's free, by the way, and Dipper says they don't expect much of a crowd. This isn't like a major competition today."

"Let's go," Eloise said.

* * *

Dipper did his best. His warm-up helped. As usual, his best event was the hundred-meter, and he did well. The eight-hundred meter not so much, but he ran his heart out. The small crowd—about two hundred in all, seventy-five from the visiting university, a hundred and twenty-five from WAU—cheered a little, but the sound was thin, for the most part. One of the runners, Brandy Vinson, said, "That's your sister, isn't it?"

Dipper glanced up at the bleachers, where Mabel was waving a couple of pom-pons and urging the crowd to cheer louder and louder. "That's Mabel," he said. "She's always been a big team supporter."

"She's been in the stands for almost every meet," Brandy said. "I'm up after this next race. Tell her we appreciate the cheers!"

"Go, W-A-U!" Mabel yelled. "Run 'em down! Run 'em down! Run 'em down, into the ground! Go-0-0-0, team!"

* * *

"Hi," Dipper said that evening, smiling at Wendy's image on his phone. "How was your day?"

Wendy sounded tired: "Fine. I think I irritated my roommate 'cause I got in so late. She thinks I had some kind of hot date with some guy, I guess, but forget her. I don't owe her any explanations. How was the track meet?"

"Took a first place in the hundred-meter, not my best time, though, and then I came in third in the eight-hundred, but all in all, we won. We were way ahead in points at the end."

"Congratulations!" Wendy said. "Wish I could have been there. Wish I hadn't got you up in the middle of the night."

"No, I'm glad you called me," Dipper said. "I was worried about you."

"Let's try not to do this again—spend days apart from each other. I want to touch you and share our feelings and all. It's so hard and lonely. Not even like when you were in California and I was up in Oregon for months every year, before we were married."

"I know what you mean," Dipper said. "What time will you be home tomorrow?"

"If we make our plane connections, we ought to haul into campus around five, five-thirty in the afternoon."

"I'll be there to pick you up," Dipper said.

"And," she said, "I'll tell you all the gory details."

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

**Time Apart**

_(February 2018)_

* * *

**9**

_Sunday Morning_

"Got your homework done?" Dipper asked Mabel.

"What are you, the Homework Sheriff?" she shot back.

"Yup," he said. "So what's the answer gunna be, little lady?"

"I got like a couple hours' worth left. Math—ugh—and that's the toughie, and then a two-page report on a piece of sculpture from the 19th or 20th century. How about Mount Rushmore?"

"I'm . . . not sure that qualifies as fine sculpture," Dipper said. "Maybe more like public works. Why not do 'The Thinker?'"

Mabel gave him a scornful eye-rolling glance. "What, that guy who just got out of the shower and is perched on the john? Nuh-uh. That was Rodan, right?"

"Rodin," Dipper said. They'd both had high-school French, but Mabel had never come terribly close to the approved pronunciation. "Rodan was a Japanese monster from the 1950s. A pterosaur the size of Minneapolis."

"Huh. I wondered how he managed to sculpt that Thinker guy out of rock without any hands!"

"There's another Rodin piece that might be more your style," Dipper said. "It's called 'The Kiss.' It's from the nineteenth century, I'm pretty sure, and it features a man kissing a woman."

"How romantic is it?"

"Umm . . . they're both naked."

"Is it one of those abstract things?" Mabel asked suspiciously. "Like a banana and a bowling ball?"

"No, it's very realistic," Dipper said, grinning. "Might be too racy for—"

"I'll pencil it in. R-O-D-I-N, right? 'The Kiss.' Can I get two pages out of that?"

"Should be easy," Dipper said. "I think it was supposed to be one of a set that Rodin was going to call 'The Gates of Hell.' Didn't you read Dante's Inferno last term?"

"Part of it," Mabel said. "Pretty tame stuff. Compared to Gravity Falls, I mean."

"OK, remember Paolo and Francesca? From the second circle of hell, I think. They were lovers swept away in a whirlwind."

"Oh, yeah! Her husband was a total jerk!"

"Right, he tricked his wife and his brother into committing adultery so he'd be free to have them killed. They were deep in love, but because they sinned and were killed before repenting—"

"Blah de blah de blahdy blah," Mabel said, holding her hands up and making her palms talk like a couple of naked Muppets. "I read it, Broseph! What does it have to do with Rodan?"

"Rodin."

"Him, too!"

"The sculpture was supposed to represent Paolo and Francesca. So you could go into that, the story that inspired the sculpture. Plus you could tell about the medium. Marble, I think. And the history of how it was carved and how it became famous—"

"Sold!" Mabel said. "How do you know so much about that?"

"How did I?" Dipper said, perplexed. "Oh, wait, Wendy took an art appreciation class when she was going to the community college back near Gravity Falls. I guess I just picked it up when we were touching each other."

Mabel rolled her eyes again, this time scornfully. "You guys! That's so close to cheating!"

"You and I always studied together in high school," Dipper pointed out. "That wasn't cheating, was it?"

"No, but you didn't look straight into my brains! Hey, would you be a good little brother and help me with math? It's that trigonometry stuff, and I'm allergic to it. All those triangles." Mabel shuddered. "It's hard for me to concentrate."

"If you agree not to call me little brother, I'll help," Dipper said. "I finished my homework already."

"Yeah, of course you did," Mabel grumbled. "I'm going out to toss a ball for Tripper for half an hour. Then we'll start."

"Remember, our weekly call to Mom and Dad's this afternoon at twelve-thirty. Don't go off anywhere."

"I got that on my schedule. When's Wendy gonna be back from South Dakota?"

"Colorado," Dipper corrected. "You've got Mount Rushmore on the brain."

"What can I say? Tom Jefferson's one hunky dude. When's she back?"

"Plane lands in Medford at three-something, so she should be back to campus by five-thirty at the latest. I'm driving in to school to pick her up. Want to tag along?"

"Doy! Yes!"

"Great," Dipper said. "You can come if you've finished your homework."

"You know," Mabel said, eyes narrowing, "in some movies, the Sheriff is the bad guy!"

* * *

"Stanford!" Dr. Baggett exclaimed. "How good to speak to you!"

"Dr. Baggett," Stanford said. "You're sounding much better."

"Feeling much better," Baggett said. "I get to go home tomorrow. My wife finally remembered to bring my phone charging cord this morning. And please call me Roy! I take it you didn't find the Slide Rock Bolter?"

"No," Stanford said. "We did find a bear."

"Oh, great heavens!"

Ford chuckled. "No harm done, and I think that's what people have been hearing. It must have a den up in the hills, and because it wasn't in good health, the sound of people nearby woke it. It roared and shoved boulders off to scare them away. No Bolter, though."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that," Baggett said. He told Stanford about the obscure archaeological dig that suggested Brophy had, after all, been buried by a landslide.

"That does make sense," Stanford agreed. "However, I'm glad I had the chance to drive out to the area. It gave me some bonding time with a bright young woman."

After a moment, Baggett said, "You can't just say that and not go further, you know!"

Ford laughed. "I'm referring to my—um, I'm not sure of the term. Grand-niece-in-law? My grand-nephew's wife. She's very intelligent and practically fearless. She happened to be attending the conference—she is a major in forestry science at Western Alliance University—"

"Good place for that major," Baggett said. "They have a first-rate program. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"I was just saying she was attending the conference, I saw her name on the roster and sought her out, and she didn't hesitate to join me to check out an urban legend, even though it involved a long drive on a cold night. And she knew just how to stand up to a bear! She startled it so much it just came to a stand-still."

"If I ever get out there, I'd love to meet her," Baggett said. "Oh, hell, here comes the nurse, rolling in my breathing treatment. This the last one?"

Ford heard the nurse say, "If you behave yourself!"

"I have to go, Ford," Baggett said. "I'll go home tomorrow, they're telling me, and have to miss maybe one week of classes to recuperate before I'm fit to lecture again. Could we schedule a nice long chat about this later? I want all the details."

They arranged for Baggett to phone Ford the next Wednesday evening. Just before he hung up, Baggett asked, "Your grand-niece? Is she by chance a redhead?"

"Yes, decidedly," Ford said. "How did you know?"

"Oh," Baggett replied, "there's just something about redheads."

* * *

Wendy dozed on the flight from Denver to Rogue Valley. It was only a three-hour trip, but she needed to make up some lost sleep. She had an aisle seat, which she reclined—not all the way—and she used her ushanka as an improvised pillow. The pilot's announcement that they were cleared for landing woke her, and she raised her seat back to its full upright position. "You must've had trouble sleeping during the conference," Dean Deavers, who had gallantly taken the middle seat, said.

"I did have some trouble," Wendy admitted, but she didn't say why. "Glad I got to attend, though. Thanks for inviting me along, Dr. Deavers. I enjoyed the presentations and learned a lot."

"I enjoyed meeting your uncle," Deavers said. "Or is there such a thing as an uncle-in-law? At first I thought he was his brother, Stanley, who came to argue us into giving you early admission a couple of years back. They look so much alike, you'd think they were twins! But Stanford—that's Dr. Pines, right? I guess he must be the younger brother."

_Oh, yeah. Dr. Deavers met Stanley back before Stan and Ford sipped from the Fountain of Youth or something._

"Mm," Wendy said. "Yeah, he's actually my husband's great-uncle."

"What's his specialty?" Deavers asked.

Wendy thought about that for a moment. "I guess you'd call him a generalist. Biology, botany, other stuff. He's the one who wrote the first scientific description of the Venus Woodpecker Trap tree in Oregon."

Deavers's eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened. "Is he? I remember reading something about that. I'd love to see one in the wild! Fascinating. Wish I'd known it earlier. I'd like to talk to him about that some time."

"Well," Wendy said, "I'll get you his school email address. He's the president of a new research institute."

The pilot reminded everyone to close and fasten their trays, straighten their seats, and wear their seatbelts, the plane tilted down, and in a few minutes it jounced as it touched down on the runway. A few more minutes later, everyone got up and then a few more minutes after that, they all filed out of the plane. Because of the difference between Mountain Time and Pacific Time, it was still only 2:55 in the afternoon.

Wendy joined the others as they went out to meet the bus to Crescent City. But as they headed out to the parking lot, Wendy heard Mabel's voice: "Hey! Over here! We came to meet you! This is me, yelling with my mouth!"

"You guys!"

Rolling her overnight bag along, Wendy rushed over to hug Mabel, then hugged Dipper tighter. "Dr. Deavers!" she called. "My husband and sister-in-law came to give me a lift. I won't be riding the bus back, OK?"

"Fine!" Deavers said. He shook hands with Dipper. "I've met you a time or two before, Mr. Pines. I don't think I've ever told you what a lucky guy you are to have a wife like Wendy. Oh, wait a second, I want you to meet my wife—"

* * *

As Dipper started the engine of the Land Runner, Mabel said, "They seem like a nice couple. What did he think about your expedition with Grunkle Ford, Wendy?"

"He . . . doesn't know the whole story," Wendy said. "And my roommate still thinks I had a romantic rendezvous on Friday night."

"What's a ghost bear?" Dipper asked.

Wendy smiled. "Ah. It's a specimen of _Ursus arctos horribilis_."

"It sounds so _cuddly_!" Mabel said from the back seat.

"Yeah, well, it's also known as a grizzly bear, Mabes," Wendy said.

"What makes it a ghost?" asked Mabel.

"Long time ago, Colorado used to be a stamping ground for grizzlies," Wendy explained. "Not any longer, though. They're usually considered extinct in the state. But still now and then somebody spots one, or thinks they spot one, in the mountains and foothills. People call them ghost bears, 'cause nobody ever seems able to get a clear photo of one or capture one, so there's not much physical proof they still show up."

"What's a bear doing out in February?" Dipper asked. "I thought they hibernated."

"Bears don't hibernate," Wendy said.

"Come on!" Mabel said.

"No, really," Wendy told them. "They den up for the winter, and they get torpid—"

Dipper interrupted: "That means sluggish and hard to get out of bed, Sis."

"What are you implying, hmm?" Mabel asked.

"Anyway," Wendy continued, "they can and sometimes do wake up. This one turned out to be sick."

"Aw! Poor baby!"

"It had a real bad infected tooth," Wendy said. "Must've been painful. And it was seriously underweight—for a male grizzly, it was at least a hundred pounds thinner than it should have been."

"No wonder it woke up!" Dipper said.

"They didn't kill the poor thing, did they?" Mabel asked anxiously.

Wendy reassured her: "No, not at all. I stunned it with one of Ford's destabilizers. Then Ford got on the phone and we notified the Fish and Wildlife folks, gave them the GPS coordinates, and they choppered a team in. The vet sedated the bear before it could really get back to full consciousness. Then a ground team arrived in a special truck and took the bear to a treatment facility. Yesterday they extracted the bad tooth, and he's getting antibiotics and liquids."

"Zoo?" Dipper guessed.

"No, man. Grizzlies are endangered. He's gonna be kept at a rehabilitation center, be fed well, and then in April he'll be taken to a bear reserve in Washington State. I phoned the guys at the rescue center yesterday afternoon to check on the bear, and they say he'll recover. He's only about five years old—grizzlies live to be twenty or more—so he'll be able to get back with his own kind, maybe mate and have a family. They're gonna keep me informed."

"That's good," Mabel said. "Let's name him!"

"He's wild," Dipper reminded her. "Maybe we'll do best for him by leaving him alone."

They drove for a few minutes in silence before Wendy asked, "You upset with me, Dip?"

"Huh? Me? No!" Dipper said. "Uh—I guess I think Grunkle Ford should at least have called me before taking you off into danger, though."

"Don't be mad at him, either" Wendy said. "We looked out for each other. And hey, it was almost like going on an adventure with you. 'Cept Ford's older and stuffier."

"Hah! Give Dipper time! Heyo!" Mabel said.

* * *

That evening in Crescent City they ate out, then back home Wendy inspected the Green Machine. "Rims are OK, anyhow," she said.

"Tires will be ready for us to pick up tomorrow as soon as we're out of class," Dipper told her.

"What's the damage?"

"Not hardly as bad as I thought. Steve got us a good deal—came to nine hundred and fifty, tax included."

"Ouch," Wendy said.

"It's worth it," Dipper told her.

Mabel was out back again, playing with Tripper in the twilight. Wendy stepped out on the deck and called, "Hey, Mabes! Me and Dip are gonna turn in early. I'm tired from the trip."

Mabel paused, holding a stick straight out. Tripper leaped over it twice. Then Mabel said, "Tired . . . right. Yeah. If I were you, I'd get to bed right away! 'Cause of being so _tired_! Good night!"

Wendy smirked, but didn't verbally reply. A few minutes later, relaxing in the shower, Wendy murmured. "I missed you so much."

— _Missed you too,_ Dipper told her telepathically.

After the shower, Wendy and Dipper did go straight to bed.

And they did indeed have a good night.

* * *

_The End_


End file.
